2020 Presidential Candidates

[Teacher Terry]

I have not watched any news for 11 days since we were on vacation. I will start catching up today.

[LDAHL]

Jane, since the republicans don't actually have any policy ideas their best hope besides racism is to keep shouting 'THEY'RE GOING TO FORCE YOU TO DO SOCIALISM!!!SOCIALISM!!!" and hope that the word is as scary as the word liberal used to be.

The GOP often falls short of the conservative party I would like it to be. Especially recently. But I have to believe that if half the country actually fit your caricature of fearful, ignorant racists unable to appreciate their enlightened betters, we would long since have descended into chaos.

I don't particularly fear a socialism nobody in this country seems able to define. I don't tremble when a first term congressperson stamps her feet and announces "I'm the boss, how about that?". I don't think her brand of Starbucks Stalinism will catch on, at least in my lifetime. Charges of racism have become so overused that they've become merely pro forma. Sort of like "have a nice day". I'm not even all that worried when politicians view Catholicism as a potential disqualifier for judicial appointments. Such thinking reveals more about the questioner than the questioned.

I would be more worried if I thought the current crop of "ideas" on offer by the Democratic Party contenders was taken seriously by rank and file Democrats, much less the country at large. The more extreme positions they need to take to get through the primaries, the more difficult it will be for them to attract general election votes, even in the Trump era.

[jp1]

You're probably right that half the country aren't raging racists. After all Trump didn't get anywhere near half the country to vote for him. But I also don't think half the country are the conservatives that republican politicians think they are. The ease with which they have abandoned what used to be conservative ideals, like fiscal responsibility, low or no trade barriers, law and order, have been done away with, and other then some pundit hand wringing I don't see any signs that the voters on the right care too much. The truth is that republican politician class ideas like tax cuts for the rich and undoing environmental protections for everyone else in order to help their buddies in the fossil fuel and other extractive businesses don't really have a large constituency. Certainly not enough of one to get close to being elected to national or statewide office. So the republicans made friends with the racists and the religious values voters in order to get enough votes together to win things. Trump isn't some strange new permutation. He just saw what the republicans had been doing all along and instead of using dog whistles he used megaphones.

[JaneV2.0]

Jane, since the republicans don't actually have any policy ideas their best hope besides racism is to keep shouting 'THEY'RE GOING TO FORCE YOU TO DO SOCIALISM!!!SOCIALISM!!!" and hope that the word is as scary as the word liberal used to be.

AT THE POINT OF A GUN!

OMG--IF WE DO AWAY WITH THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE, WHITE PEOPLE WILL LOSE CONTROL OF THE COUNTRY!

"What would happen if they do what they say they’re gonna do, white people will not have anything to say. It’s only going to be the minorities who would elect. It would be California, Texas, Florida,” --Paul LePage, former governor of Maine, February 26, 2019

[Yppej]

Florida can't be that bad since LePage went there this winter.

[Alan]

"What would happen if they do what they say they’re gonna do, white people will not have anything to say. It’s only going to be the minorities who would elect. It would be California, Texas, Florida,” --Paul LePage, former governor of Maine, March 26, 2019

Is that what's known in financial circles as a 'forward looking statement'?

[catherine]

Is that what's known in financial circles as a 'forward looking statement'?

I'm looking forward to turning 67 on that very day.

[LDAHL]

And now John Hickenlooper has entered the race, apparently positioning himself in the pragmatic progressive market niche. I suspect that will be a hard sell in this angry year.

[jp1]

Pragmatic progressive. I guess that means he's in favor of fracking, but only if it's solar powered fracking.

[LDAHL]

Pragmatic progressive. I guess that means he's in favor of fracking, but only if it's solar powered fracking.

I wouldn’t worry too much about the threat he presents to the more radical wing of the party. No doubt they will dig into his background as a geologist and brewpub proprietor to accuse him of selling beer to miners.